Kerry's "Too Late" Declaration

Not that we needed further confirmation of the administration's martial intent, but Secretary Kerry's "too late" declaration, minutes ago, capped it. The tyrant Assad was too late, said Kerry, in admitting U.N. inspectors to investigate the "moral obscenity" of chemical warfare (for moral ambiguity, see Foreign Policy magazine's "CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran"), so, so, so ... 

We're going to war--again. Of course Secretary Kerry didn't actually say that; but "too late" for what, or rather what else? A stern letter on top of the tongue-lashing?

I don't wish to seem unsympathetic to President Obama's lonely plight. But he is, after all, commander in chief, and he will be the one ordering missile strikes, and he will be taking it upon himself to perpetuate America's proportionate-response doctrine, even in muddled circumstances with vague intelligence against a foe who hasn't attacked us.

It's what we do.

Obama must be feeling a bit like the young Michael Corleone about now, hearing his saddened father concede the inevitability of embracing the family business: "There wasn't enough time, Michael, there just wasn't enough time"--to fundamentally change America's foreign policy course.     

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

Define "going to war".

[Peter G]

Ow. Oh dear, we're past the actual evidence collecting stage are we? Already? Don't actually know the if or the who but it may be time to bomb the usual suspects. Oh well it's not as if Assad doesn't have it coming. I can't honestly tell you if this is really advisable or not but I do know that when St Ronnie rolled one through Ghadaffi's living room it did prove to have a somewhat sobering effect on that particular nutbar.

[Charlieford]

Peter G, what are you saying? One dead Assad daughter, coming right up?

P.M.'s "It's what we do" is among the truest things ever spoken. Of course, I would say so, since for the last ten years I've been resorting to "It's what we do" when students inquire why we get in so many wars, in lieu of a more sophisticated explanation. The truth of it is, I think, that these actions just have a lot to do with our activist, Dudley Do-Right, self-image, which is in tension with some other concerns--like the ones that have around 70% of both Democrats and Republicans saying stay out of Syria.

Listening to McCain today was a depressing experience. He has no outcome he is looking to, let alone a plan to get there. It's just all about credibility--is America going to take it laying down, or is it going to respond?

It's about us.

[AnneJ]

It seems to me that no matter what course we take, we're screwed.

[Peter G]

You know what was running through my mind when I wrote that Charlieford? Bluto's speech In Animal House.

[shsavage]

Looking at this chart -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/26/the-middle-east-explained-in-one-sort-of-terrifying-chart/ -- makes it all crystal clear, and provides a handy guide to who we should punish. The simple, neocon answer? Pick anybody; it will eventually link back to someone or something that we don't like. It really won't matter who we drop on, so long as we DO SOMETHING.

But if we drop, we'll only do it so we'll feel good about ourselves, in order to convince ourselves that we're somehow still relevant in the Middle East. And we'll piss off everybody, some because we didn't do enough; some because we did too much; everybody, because it's not really our business in the first place. And the Congressional GOP? Whatever is done will be instantly wrong simply because POTUS ordered it.

[Robert Lipscomb]

It is pretty clear that we intend to bomb military targets to get Assad to stop using chemical weapons (30 instances and counting) and use conventional weapons in the civil war.

And not much more.

That seems like a good thing to me and should not be conflated with the neo-cons' American Century.

[Peter G]

You know what the problem with that chart is Robert? To truly represent the Middle East it needs to be in gif format with lines constantly changing frame by frame. No other part of the world has produced so many Nobel Prize winning one time terrorists. Or any other part of the world at all, for that matter.

[shsavage]

Exactly, Peter. And all you have to do is read Runciman's "History of the Crusades" to realize that it has been this way for at least 1,000 years. Everybody has been, or will be, in bed with everybody else.